Maps from 'Voyage de decouvertes aux terres australes'

In October 1800 Capitaine Nicolas Baudin was commissioned to lead an expedition to complete the French survey of the Australian coastline, and to document and collect specimens of flora and fauna for the Emperor of France, Napoleon. His two ships, Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste, arrived at Cape Leeuwin in May 1801. By early April 1802 Baudin in Le Geographe was in South Australian waters. Sailing westwards along the south coast, he chanced upon Captain Matthew Flinders leading an English expedition. The meeting took place near the Murray Mouth, and consequently Flinders named the location Encounter Bay.

Sadly, Baudin died in 1803, on the homeward voyage, so the publication of details of the voyage was undertaken by his naturalist, Francois Peron. The first volume of Voyage de decouvertes aux Terres Australes was published in 1807. Peron died in 1810, so that it was then Baudin's cartographer, Louis de Freycinet, who published a further record of the expedition in 1811, including the French charts of Australia - three years before Flinders' work came into print. Freycinet's Carte General de la Nouvelle Hollande was therefore the first chart of the continent which Flinders had named Australia.

Louis de Freycinet, a junior lieutenant on the Expedition, worked on the charts, and following Péron's death completed the official account of the expedition. In 1824 a second edition of the Baudin expedition, edited by Freycinet, appeared, this time including the place names given by Matthew Flinders to the sections of the coast he had discovered prior to the arrival of the French expedition. Ultimately however, a scattering of French names remained in use in South Australia, including Fleurieu Peninsula, Vivonne Bay and Rivoli Bay.

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